For UW doc, travel is the best medicine

Christopher Sanford, a Seattle travel-medicine doctor, spends most of his days helping globe-trotting travelers stay healthy.

Before they head off to less-developed countries, he advises them on everything from vaccinations to avoiding malaria. If travelers return with any nasty bodily souvenirs, Sanford helps cure them.

Yet more and more, he focuses on getting travelers to be careful on the road — literally. "The biggest threat in the developing world is not infectious diseases. It's car crashes," said Sanford.

Tempted to ride on the roof of a bus in India? Or to rent a motorbike and zip around an Indonesian island? Think twice, says Sanford, and take all the safety precautions you can. Wear a helmet on bicycles or motorcycles. Use seat belts, if you're lucky enough to find vehicles that have them. And ride inside the bus.

Vehicle accidents cause about 25 percent of the deaths of visitors to the developing world, says Sanford, and only 1 percent is from infectious diseases. (Most of the rest of the deaths are from heart attacks, strokes, drowning, falls from heights, plus homicide and suicide.)

At his small office tucked into the University of Washington's Travel Clinic at Hall Health Center, plus a regular clinic at the Boeing Co., the 51-year-old doctor gives travel advice to everyone from backpacking students to corporate executives.

"In any given day, people I've seen are in 80 different countries," says Sanford.

To help world travelers stay healthy, he's written a new book, "The Adventurous Traveler's Guide to Health," published in May by the University of Washington Press.

The paperback isn't a heavy-going medical tome. It's easygoing and witty, with chapters on what vaccinations are needed; advice on avoiding mosquito-transmitted illnesses, including malaria and the rapidly spreading dengue fever; how to avoid travelers' diarrhea or deal with it if you get it; road safety; altitude sickness; traveling with children; and more.

When he's not taking care of travelers, Sanford and his young family often travel. He's a fan of off-the-beaten-track trips, for young and old. When his two sons were 5 and 7, Sanford and his wife Sallie went to Guatemala, exploring villages and coffee plantations. "The boys loved it. There were machetes everywhere."

For Sanford, it's a long way from his younger days, when he lived on a 100-acre dairy farm in Snohomish County and worked as a family-practice doctor. Medical studies in Lima, Peru (and later at Harvard University), helped hone his interest in travel and tropical medicine: "I studied 60 illnesses there that I'd never seen before."

Now, as co-director of the UW Travel Clinic, he gets a lot of job satisfaction through his patients: "I get to be part of their vacation."

Just be careful on the road, he'll tell you in person and in his book.

Kristin Jackson's "Northwest Traveler" is an occasional profile of Pacific Northwest travelers/travel companies. Contact her at kjackson@seattletimes.com or 206-464-2271.